Cooperation, To A Point

Now You Know

August 21, 2005|By Kevin Rennie

The University of Connecticut has been much in the news with Courant reporters conducting an investigation into the expansion under the UConn 2000 program, a billion-dollar blank check that the university administered with less skill than students in Accounting 101. Explaining who saw what reports of trouble in the project has turned the upper echelons of the administration into mumbling fools. And it's just begun.

The UConn branch at Avery Point in Groton was a sleepy peninsula until the 1990s, when the university and its supporters convinced the governor and the legislature to spend $35 million to build a spectacular campus to focus on the newly popular field of marine science. Big new buildings would ignite an alliance of business and research interests to work with professors and students for the advancement of knowledge and commerce.

Elected officials like to be able to sell a big state project as a boon to economic development. In the 1990s, it was all about jobs and keeping Connecticut competitive. Dressed in the right rhetoric, no project was too expensive.

UConn, however, has lost interest in the economic development aspect of the project, now that they have a new campus. The few businesses they've attracted to their incubator business program are no longer welcome. As the state struggles to show the military how welcome it is in Connecticut, the Coast Guard's research and development facility at Avery Point is leaving the campus. It was not included in UConn's construction program. (U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, has been leading the effort to move the Coast Guard facility to Fort Trumbull in New London.)

And pity Jack Ringelberg, president of Marine Science and Technology Center, a small business at the Avery Point campus. He was invited to move to Avery Point and then had to fight to get into 1,600 feet in the main building in 2001. Three years later, he got a letter telling him his lease would not be renewed. The university suffers from what he calls ``academic isolationism.'' They are not interested in cooperating with anyone in pursuing the initial vision of the campus. His space, according to UConn Associate Vice Provost Joseph Comprone, will be used for the school's programs.

State Sen. Cathy Cook, R-Mystic, who's been working on marine programs for the region for 13 years, concedes that ``scientists at UConn never got together with Coast Guard researchers.''

Instead, UConn, claiming a space crunch (was there ever a public university that would admit it had enough room?), wants to expand its programs and ignore the original purpose of the campus expansion. It even turned down Electric Boat's request for help at its plant with a course for workers. The university wants the taxpayers to build a dormitory and student center for the expanding academic programs. All others can vamoose. Gov. M. Jodi Rell's administration ought to halt short- and long-range plans until the school spirit includes cooperation.

It's not much better at Trinity College in Hartford. You may recall that a decade ago, political and civic leaders in the region lost their heads over the egregious Evan Dobelle, president of Trinity, and his mighty plans to tear down the neighborhood around the college. The taxpayers contributed nearly all of the $100 million for what came to be known as ``The Learning Corridor'' in the city's South End. It was accompanied by a commitment from Dobelle, the biggest huckster Connecticut's seen since Bridgeport's P.T. Barnum, to initiate and support programs in the neighborhood. Trinity proclaimed itself the national model of an urban college committed to its neighbors.

Dobelle left Trinity much sooner than expected to become president of the University of Hawaii, where they soon had his number. They canned him after his taste for partisan politics and high living came to light.

Public officials heaped purple prose on Dobelle while he was here. One Hartford City Council member declared at the time that, ``He's got kind of a regal way about him.'' Yeah, like some jumped-up autocrat who gives himself a royal moniker.

Trinity has gone through five leaders in five years and does not want to be reminded of the details of its commitment to Hartford now that it's having trouble balancing its books.

My, what thin skins they have. I found that out last month when I asked former Dobelle acolyte Mayor Eddie Perez about an internal Trinity report looking for a graceful way to abandon some of its commitments. The memo, which Trinity did not release but I obtained, was not artfully written and revealed a keener sensitivity to negative publicity than to Hartford's needs. Trinity wants to back off or ``recalibrate'' its support of a half-dozen popular programs in the neighborhood, while protecting its image in the media.

Perez called into WTIC's Morning Program one day in July when I was co-host with the popular Diane Smith. Perez was mewling about a corporate philanthropic commitment to the city, so it was a good time to ask him about his old friends at Trinity. His honor was not well-pleased. He didn't know anything about Trinity taking a powder on the neighbors and shrugged it off to their money problems.

By the time the show ended a couple of hours later, the mayor's office and Trinity had called the station brass to complain that such impertinent questions would be asked. Perez makes much of his youthful membership in a gang. What gang was that? The creampuffs? His honor is very sensitive to criticism or even unrehearsed questions. Not a good sign.

Trinity is no better, but at least the brouhaha has prompted it to keep supporting the community programs, which is more than what UConn at the Avery Point campus has done.